Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day015.05
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20
MR RAMPTON: What Mr Irving knows, because I think I have told
him before in open court, my Lord, is this. If there is
material which in his eyes undermines or affects the
credibility of witnesses who are not to be called as live
witnesses, he is entitled to put those materials before
the court.
A. You are not telling me anything I do not know, of course.
I am perfectly entitled to do that under the
circumstances.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we are trying to be constructive
about this and I am actually trying to save you some-- --
A. Yes. I deeply regret this because we have informed the
defence at every stage which witnesses we are calling and
which we are not calling.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have just said to Mr Rampton what you
heard me say, and I am sure he will let you know if and
. P-37
when he is abandoning any other witnesses. But if
Professor Funke is going to be called, then surely
what he
has to say, for whatever it may be worth, ought to be
put.
MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship pleases. That is what I
said.
I might do it in very broad outline only.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a matter for you, but something
has
to be put to give Mr Irving the opportunity to deal
with
it.
A. It makes it very difficult for me to put in a rebuttal
document unless these witnesses are there to put them
to,
which may very well be why they have adopted this
tactic.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we see how much of a problem that
proves to be? I think less than perhaps you think.
Having cleared the decks in that way, shall we now
have
your Mr Millar? Do you need to speak to him before he
goes into the box?
MR IRVING: No.
MR RAMPTON: I do not know which file his witness statement
is
in, I am afraid. C4, my Lord, tab 3.
< (The witness stood down)
< Mr Peter Millar, sworn.
< Examined by Mr Irving.
Q. Mr Millar, do you have a copy of your witness
statement
with you?
A. No I do not.
Q. Your Lordship will find it in ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got it.
. P-38
MR IRVING: Mr Millar, when was the last time we met?
A. Several years ago.
Q. About eight years ago?
A. About eight years ago, yes.
Q. We have not rehearsed today's discussion in any way?
A. In no way at all.
Q. No way at all. I just take you very rapidly through
your
witness statement. In the third paragraph you say
that
the Russian archives were in a very dilapidated
building
and that the filing system extremely archaic. Is that
correct?
A. Absolutely.
Q. In a minute or two I will be taking you through the
diary which I wrote, one entry, one day's entry,
concerning our discussion with the Russian archivists.
Is
it correct to say that, as you say in your witness
statement, no written agreement was made, everything
was
arranged verbally?
A. Absolutely.
Q. If you turn back to the first page in your witness
statement, please, at the bottom of that paragraph,
"After
Mr Irving was allowed access, he told me that the
boxes of
microfiches were stored in a very bad condition, in
weak
cardboard boxes, with the individual boxes over filled
and
no kind of special packaging to protect them". Can
the
witness be given a bundle of photographs, five
photographs
. P-39
showing the boxes, or a number of boxes, and a number
of
microfiches, the glass plates, and a number of
photographs
made on those microfiches?
A. (Same handed) Yes.
Q. Are those the boxes that, as far as you can recall ---
-
A. Indeed, I remember them very well. I remember
noticing in
particular the contemporary 1940s packaging.
Q. In other words, these were the original 50 year old
boxes
that the glass plates were still stored in?
A. Oh, yes, quite clearly.
Q. Did you gain the impression that the Russian
archivists, I
am going by your statement again, were unfamiliar with
the
concept of outsiders having access to their material?
I lived in the Soviet Union for three years and
Russian
archivists are completely unused to anyone having
access
to anything.
Q. So a research room is something they are not familiar
with?
A. They would not even have ones to cope with.
Q. Did they facilities for reading these glass plates?
A. Not at the time, no.
Q. So they had no microfilm reader?
A. There was no microfilm reader.
Q. Nothing at all? How did I manage to read them, then,
to
your recollection?
A. I am not actually -- we looked at them at the time.
They
. P-40
were not full script. You had a magnifying glass, and
possibly a light source behind.
Q. When I went to Moscow, had the Sunday Times provided
me
with a list of episodes to look specifically for?
A. We had certainly at the Sunday Times, and I advising
them,
looked at certain episodes that we were particularly
interest in, yes.
Q. Was I going to be there only for a limited space of
time?
A. As far as we knew.
Q. Would it therefore have been practicable for me to
have
browsed at length in the diaries for passages which
were
not on the list?
A. I do not think so.
Q. Yes. I just want to ask you once again. There was no
written agreement between us and the Russians?
A. There was no written agreement that I was aware of.
Whether or not anything else had been arranged between
the
legal department of the Sunday Times I have no idea.
That
was not my capacity.
Q. There was no verbal agreement between us and the
Russians
to your recollection or, if there was an agreement,
what
nature did the agreement have, to your best
recollection?
A. My best recollection was verbal agreement that we
would
have access to the plates, that we would look at them
and
eventually this would be with a view to publishing
some of
the contents.
. P-41
Q. Yes. You say to publishing some of the contents. Was
that restricted to a book or any kind of publication
that
we desired?
A. I do not recall that being discussed.
Q. Did they limit in it in any way?
A. I do not recall them doing so.
Q. On the third page of your witness statement you say
that
you double checked some of the transcriptions that I
had
made, and the translations. Did you find any reason
to
criticise the work that I had done?
A. Certainly the translations -- I am a fluent German
speaker
and the translations were excellent. The transcripts
I had some difficulty because the archaic Gothic
script is
difficult to decipher, but in those stretches where
I could make out words it seemed to be accurate.
Q. Moving rapidly on, the final matter on your witness
statement is that you have visited me on several
occasions
in my office in London, in my study.
A. At the time when we were negotiating over the Goebbels
diaries, yes.
Q. This was 1992, is that correct?
A. That is correct.
Q. Did you see hanging over my desk or anywhere in that
office an Adolf Hitler portrait?
A. No. I would have noticed that.
Q. Was there an Adolf Hitler signature on the desk in a
frame
. P-42
or anything like that?
A. There was, as I refer to in the statement, a water
colour
which I was extremely interested in, and you said that
it
had been painted by Adolf Hitler and I said it was
rather
better than my mother-in-law's.
Q. Was it an original or a duplicate?
A. It was, as far as I was aware, an original. I asked
you
that and you told me it was.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your mother-in-law has got a picture by
Hitler as well?
A. My mother-in-law does water colours, sir.
MR IRVING: Finally, Mr Millar, would you turn to the
little
bundle of the diary? Is it lying around there
somewhere?
Otherwise, I will hand one up to you. I would ask you
to
just to go to one entry of June 9th 1992.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have a copy for me, Mr Irving, or
have
you handed it up before?
MR IRVING: It has been handed up before about four or five
days ago with a green corner on it. I have one here.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I will have it here. Is the
first
line "invitation needed"?
MR IRVING: Almost certainly, my Lord. It looks like a
diary.
There are obviously many entries referring to Mr
Millar,
but I think we will stick with the one day in Moscow
when
we negotiated with the Russians, June 9th 1992,
Tuesday.
Does your Lordship have it?
. P-43
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not got there yet but I think I
have.
MR IRVING: This is the famous diary. There are no little
racist ditties in it, I am afraid.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick to the task in hand.
MR IRVING: "9.30 a.m. collected Millar at Metropole".
That is
the hotel. I would ask Mr Millar, would you read
rapidly
through those two paragraphs?
A. Yes, I have read them.
MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not so can you give me a moment?
(Pause for reading).
MR IRVING: In fact, I am going to ask you to read the
first
four paragraphs down to the words "Left at 5 p.m."
MR JUSTICE GRAY: (Pause for reading) Yes.
MR IRVING: Very well. I think there is no need to read
them
out in court is there, my Lord?
MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really a matter for you. There
is
certainly no need to.
MR IRVING: I would just ask him to paraphrase it. Am I
correct in saying this shows us arriving at the
archives,
dealing with a man called Dr Bondarev?
A. Yes.
Q. Who was Dr Bondarev to your recollection?
A. He was curator in charge of the archives. Certainly
he
was the man who controlled access.
Q. Was he in overall charge of the Russian archive
system?
A. No, only of that particular building.
. P-44
Q. Who was in overall charge of the Russian Federation
archive system?
A. The man whom we had to contact to gain access was
Bevininski at the Russian Federation Archives
building.
Q. Who?
A. Sorry, Tarasov. I am confusing the two.
Q. Professor Tarasov. You negotiated with him in Russian?
A. That is right.
Q. And I talked with him in English and German?
A. That is correct.
Q. And eventually he lifted the telephone and he
telephoned
Bondarev.
A. Yes, he did.
Q. What kind of directions did he give to Bondarev in
general
terms?
A. He confirmed -- we had already seen Bondarev -- that
we
were to be allowed to see the plates and to work with
them.
Q. Yes. Was any kind of restriction placed on that
access in
that telephone call, do you remember?
A. No, certainly not in that telephone call.
Q. Was there any kind of written paper passed between
myself
and Bondarev and Tarasov on that occasion?
A. No.
Q. I only have one other point I wish to examine you on,
Mr Millar, and that is as follows. Two or three days
. P-45
later, I borrowed two of the glass plates from the
archives without permission.
A. Yes.
Q. That is correct. Did I put the plates back to the
best of
your knowledge on the following day?
A. At my insistence.
Q. Was there any indication that I was intending not to
put
them back?
A. No, there was not.
Q. What did we do with those plates on the night that
they
had their night out, so to speak?
A. What was done with those plates was that you took them
and, using two pieces of cardboard, left them outside
the
archive building.
Q. Yes, but what did we do with them?
A. They were then shown to the Sunday Times representative.
Q. Did we have prints made on that night by a man called Sacha?
A. That is right. They were taken away and used to take a
photographic copy.
Q. You expressed your disapproval of this technique?
A. I expressed my disapproval of the fact that they had been
removed from the archive because I thought it was
jeopardising the chances of our continued access.
Q. Quite right. On the following day, did the archive allow
us to remove plates with permission?
. P-46
A. After some discussion with them, yes, that is right.

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